AKG D3700
The budget end of AKG's Tri-Power line - a hypercardioid dynamic that promised stage-ready feedback rejection for the price of a decent dinner out.
Overview
AKG rolled out its Tri-Power Series at the January NAMM show. The company hadn't launched a new microphone line in years, and it made sure everyone knew it. Full-page ads, custom binders, color brochures, slides, stickers, buttons. The D3700 sat at the bottom of that lineup, the entry point to a family of four vocal mics and three instrument mics. It ended up in the most gig bags because it asked the least of a working musician's wallet.
The D3700 is a hypercardioid dynamic vocal microphone rated at a frequency response of 60 Hz to 18 kHz. That's a respectable figure for a budget stage mic, and it wasn't slashed down from the flagship models the way affordable lines often are. The same review pegged the D3700 at $189. The D3700S, identical but for a recessed, accessible on/off switch, was $199.
The body shape is the other thing people remember. AKG gave the vocal Tri-Powers a triangulated, "dress black" shell with a discreet green stripe and white logo. Mix described the design as fitting standard mic-stand clips while improving grip and keeping the mic from rolling off a table when you set it down. The shells were built to take performance abuse, with sturdy plastic inner cages protecting the neodymium/iron boron transducers. The heavy-duty steel windscreen comes off with a press-and-twist, child-proof-cap motion. Under it is a two-layer foam windscreen that can be plucked out for cleaning, which is handy once a singer's pop filter turns into a petri dish.
Where the D3700 parts ways with its siblings is handling noise. The D3800 and D3900 got AKG's patented Moving Magnet Suspension, which floats the magnet assembly so physical shocks to the body move it in the same direction and distance as the diaphragm, cancelling the rumble. The D3700 is a conventional design. Mix (1992, p.87) put the two side by side: the MMS-equipped D3800 was "much less susceptible to handling noise," with the greatest attenuation in the low and low-mid region, and the reviewer called the difference immediately obvious. AKG claimed a 10 dB improvement for MMS over conventional designs. If a vocalist works the mic in their hands all night, the D3700 will let you know about it. If it lives on a stand, that gap mostly disappears.
The D3700 also sits on the lower of the Tri-Power line's two capsule designs. The D3700S shares it, while the D3800 and D3900 move up to the high-end capsule. It's a hypercardioid, and AKG's period advertising leaned hard on the feedback-rejection story, billing the Tri-Power transducer systems as fighting feedback and giving vocals "punch and presence." That's marketing copy, not a measurement. The polar pattern is the real mechanism behind it, and hypercardioid is a sensible choice for a stage vocal mic surrounded by monitors.
These mics are cheap and plentiful on the used market. By 1998, Sound on Sound (September 1998, p.53) listed the D3700 at £59 each, or three for £129. The line also spawned an "M" suffix variant, a version with a removable, wired XLR module interchangeable with AKG's wireless TM40 transmitters. Rental houses and touring players could convert a wired mic to wireless without buying a second microphone.
The D3700 doesn't command D3800 or D3900 money: no MMS, no contour switches, the basic capsule. For a stand-mounted vocal, a backup, or a first mic that can survive a van and a bar gig, it does the job the Tri-Power line was built for.
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